The week’s passages

James Garner, 86, a master of light comedy who shot to fame in the 1950s as the charming and dry-witted gambler on the TV western “Maverick” and later won an Emmy as the unconventional Los Angeles private eye on “The Rockford Files,” died July 19 in Los Angeles.

Vic Atiyeh, 91, Oregon’s last Republican governor, who shepherded the state through a deep recession during two terms in the 1980s and who championed allowing citizens to be “left alone,” died July 20 in Portland.

Madeline Amgott, 92, one of the few women to produce news programs in the male-dominated TV universe of the 1950s and ’60s, died of lymphoma July 19 in Manhattan.

Henry Hartsfield Jr., 80, a former Air Force pilot who flew on three NASA space shuttles, including as the pilot of the final test flight of the Columbia and as the commander of the maiden mission of the Discovery, died Thursday. NASA did not say where he died or specify the cause.

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Karl Albrecht, 94, a reclusive billionaire who with his younger brother Theo turned his mother’s corner store into Aldi, a worldwide grocery empire, died July 16 in Essen, Germany.

Robert Panara, 94, who lost his hearing as a child and became a leading educator of the deaf at Gallaudet University and Rochester Institute of Technology and a pioneer of studies of deaf culture, died July 20 in Rochester, N.Y.

Curt Gentry, 83, a California historian who wrote or co-wrote more than a dozen books, including the true-crime classic “Helter Skelter” about the Manson family murders, written with former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, died of lung cancer July 10 in San Francisco.

Dan Borislow, 52, the inventor of the magicJack device and a pioneer in developing phone calls over the Internet, died of a heart attack Monday, said officials at the West Palm Beach, Fla., company he founded.

Bill Mulliken, 74, a little-known college swimmer who outpaced national champions and the world-record holder in the 200-meter breaststroke to win gold in the 1960 Olympic Games (and later became a lawyer), died Thursday in Chicago after a stroke.

Robert Newhouse, 64, a running back for the Dallas Cowboys for 12 seasons who went to three Super Bowls with some of the Cowboys’ greatest teams, including the 1976 NFL champions, died Tuesday at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., after a battle with heart disease.

Thomas Berger, 89, the witty and eclectic novelist who re-imagined the American West in the historical yarn “Little Big Man” and mastered genres ranging from detective stories to domestic farce, died in Nyack, N.Y., on July 13. He had been in failing health.

Elaine M. Brody, 91, a sociologist whose research on the elderly revealed increasing stress on women trying to build careers while caring for children and aging parents — “women in the middle,” she called them — died July 9 in San Mateo, Calif.

Albert J. Stunkard, 92, a doctor and pioneer of eating-disorder research who proved that some people are genetically predisposed to getting fat and who was also one of the first medical professionals to condemn the stigmatization of overweight people, died July 12 in Bryn Mawr, Penn.